19
He should have been exultant with the things he did that day. His plan worked to perfection, the curse was broken, his magic was back, he had the satisfaction of using his darkest powers to summon a terrible force and attack his enemy. But everything has been upset – set off – by the unplanned, unexpected, and incomprehensible miracle of Belle's return. Her appearance eclipsed everything else; it was so much bigger than everything else that it kind of stood between him and his actions. Magic was back only to stand between them. Revenge upon Regina had an aftertaste of a broken promise, and he kept imagining disappointment in Belle's eyes when she'd learn the truth. She always wanted him to be a good man – she believed him to be a good man. And, however naïve her wish was, he felt nice trying to please her. He told himself that technically he did not break his promise: he wasn't killing the Queen with his own hands, and actually he wasn't killing her at all – just trapping her soul in a supernatural prison. But somehow he was sure Belle wouldn't be impressed by nuances. She'd feel compassionate towards her tormentor – that was part of her sweet nature, her unbreakable goodness. But that would be just a part of her distress. The main thing would be her disappointment in him – her sadness at his lie, her sadness at his fall. God knows what she saw in him back then, when she tried to break his curse and find the man he once were – a man she would but pity, if she'd notice him at all; God knows what she saw in him now, when he was so drastically changed outwardly.
He did not doubt his actions even for a second – he did what was necessary to do and was sure of that. He just didn't want to look bad in her eyes. He wanted her to like him, not just to be magically in love him.
There was another thing that spoiled the day for him. He was distracted. He couldn't really concentrate on any of his actions for he was constantly thinking of her; did she wake up, what was she doing, what was she thinking, was she all right? He wanted to get rid of his immediate tasks and get back to her as soon as possible. He wanted to be with her. He hoped she wasn't up yet. He wanted her to see him when she opened her eyes. What would she see in his face? What will she say? Will she still believe she loves him? Would she kiss him? He wanted her to. He wanted to get back to that moment in the forest, magical in its simplicity, when they just kissed each other, starting to get to know each other as human beings.
When he came back to the shop, she was still asleep, but showing signs that she'd wake up soon: her head moved across the pillow, she'd thrown off her blanket, as if she was hot. He became exceedingly nervous – the anticipation was too much to handle, and he decided to occupy his hands with something; he often did that, applied himself to some simple manual task, like cleaning objects from the shop, when his nerves got the better of him. This time, he decided to brew tea. She would be thirsty after sleep – surely she'd welcome a cup of tea.
He was just heating the pot with boiling water when they came – the good ones, the loving couple he united and that daughter of theirs; such a promising girl, alight with magic, it was amazing that a person could be so gifted and yet wouldn't feel her gift at all. They came to accuse him of something, as usual; it was so predictable he didn't even get hurt. He brushed them off. He had no time for them. She was in the next room – there was nothing that could hurt him or seriously occupy him compared to that. Yet, when they left, he still felt unsettled – he must have been upset. Otherwise, he couldn't have been so startled when she came out and confronted him with his broken promise. He'd have found the words to explain himself properly.
And he definitely wouldn't snap at her when she voiced her disappointment. 'I thought you'd changed', she said, sadly. And he retorted with an ironic 'What, in an hour that you've known me?' His question was entirely justified – she did not know him any better now than she did back then, and her only reason to believe he'd changed was his appearance. He might have been actually insulted by her attitude, which hinted that all their problems consisted in his looks and, as long as he did not manifest evil by being green, it was fine with her. Some true love was that, if she didn't look deeper than his skin. He might have also been irritated by the quickness of her judgment – if anyone was fast at jumping to conclusions that was she. Yes, he might have had the right to be offended and irritated. But he had no right to snap at her. Not after what happened to them in the past. Not after what she'd been through. No quips would serve them now; and anyway, the words that might have sounded lighter – ironic and teasing – spoken by his prattling green alter ego somehow didn't come out right now. It was no tease and no leading question. It sounded as downright insult.
She was out of door the moment he spoke and, though he did shout his apology to her retreating back, he did not sound convincing, for he was still angry himself. How could she be so childish? It was amazing – they were hardly back together, they were actually never together before, yet they already bickered like an old married couple. It showed a pattern, and a very sad one. It did not matter that she didn't have the time to know him; she wanted him to be the man he wasn't – she saw somebody else in him, or imagined it. She loved him, but she loved him with an 'if'. God knows he was not in the position to expect unconditional love; he was in no position to expect any sort of love. It was just so completely wrong for her to be with him. He simply could not be the man she wanted – he could not change so much without losing himself. So there was no point in them being together. They would just torment each other, and she'd waste her life on him. And he could not bear a thought of her wasting her life. She was too precious for that.
All that was hopeless. He'd have to let her go, as he let her go all these years ago. That is, if she came back to be released. She didn't look like she'd return. She changed a lot since he ordered her around the castle.
He pictured her, in his mind, as she stood before him when he was sending her away with all the cruelty he could master. He saw her determined face, all collected not to show how much she was hurting, as she delivered her parting shot, putting a spell on him, condemning him to eternal regret and emptiness without her. If only she knew just how effective her words were – how strongly they have contributed to keeping of the bond between them, the bond he tried to break so many times. He did want to break it, so that she'd be free of him, and his pain would stop. Yet it didn't seem to be breakable. He felt it still, even in this land without magic. He felt it now, tugging at his heart, like a physical thing.
With a heavy heart, he looked around the shop. Things he took from the shelf as he started preparing tea still stood on the counter. Her chipped cup was amongst them. The cup he nearly killed her father over… What would she say when she learned of that? It appeared that the disgusting fool was completely innocent, after all. He did her no harm.
He himself was the only man that did her harm, ever.
He picked the cup and, fingering it absentmindedly as if trying to find some comfort in the touch, went to his spinning wheel. He had things to do, magic to make, and he had things to forget. He wished the spinning did that, as he told her once. As it were, spinning only helped him to remember.
He sat there working yet part of him, the part that was always alert to magic happening around, sensed what was going on in town. He felt the wraith finding Regina, he felt it crushing things around it, he felt the struggle around the magic hat, the surge of light magic – must be Emma's, and the closing of the portal. He saw the scene as clearly as if he were there in the room; the magical signatures of events were clear to him. Things didn't go as he planned them. There was trouble ahead. It would have to be dealt with. But he couldn't be bothered with these things now – if he was needed, people would come to him. They always did come, however much they despised and hated him. And that was the only way in which he could relate to people: by despondency and fear and despair. Never, never by love.
And then he sensed it – the stirring in the air, the quickening of time as something powerful and bright approached the shop. She was coming back.
Was he cursed to be forever that much alert to her closeness?
She came back and stood by the door awkwardly.
He looked up from the wheel, trying to appear nonchalant, and succeeding much better than back then, in his castle, when she also came back and saw him spinning, and attacked him with her newborn love. He had to gather himself together and say what he needed to as calmly as possible. He had to send her away, again, but there must be no drama. Too many curses bound and separated them already. No more magic.
'I thought you didn't want to see me again?' Yes, that sounded good – calm. No silent screaming of his 'why did you come back' of old. Thought he did wonder why she came back, now as much as then.
'I didn't. But I was… worried'. She spoke with some hesitation. Did she also realize how much the scene mirrored, in an understated, human way, the one that happened before?
Ah, how clearly he remembered her face, then, mellow and shining, as she said: 'I wasn't going to. But then something changed my mind'. That was just before she kissed him, and their world came apart.
He told her there was nothing to worry about, which was not entirely true, but details did not concern her.
They seemed to have run out of topics for conversation.
And then she noticed the chipped cup standing beside him on a small table. Her face lit up with tenderness: 'Oh, you still have it – my chipped cup!'
She moved closer, picking it up. He stood up, looking at her with sadness. He wanted to tell her how many times this small cup drove him mad and saved him. How many times, back in the old times, he cried over it. How many times, while living under the curse, he'd touch it and feel a sudden rush of something, which felt like a memory of her, and how it tortured and consoled him. He wanted to tell her how, on the night he remembered himself, he came home, hardly feeling his legs, and went straight through to the cupboard where he kept the cup, and took it into his hands, and relived their love, and how he wept, and how he took the little piece of china to bed with him; clutching it to his heart, he felt she was with him. He wanted to tell her how he nearly killed her father about this cup. He wanted to tell her that it stood by his wheel now because he wanted to pretend that she was sitting by his side as he worked, as she used to sit so many years ago, in a different world. But if he told her all that, they would start thinking of love again. And that would make letting her go that much harder.
So instead of all that, he took the cup from her hands, and said: 'There are many, many things in this shop. But this… This is the only thing I truly cherish'. She looked at him with such devotion and such compassion that his heart was ready to break. That look alone told him he must set her free. His life was not a place for her. He gathered his strength and said evenly: 'And now, you must leave'.
'What?' A shock registered on her face – it was surprise, but not pain; and he felt relieved. Perhaps she would not think of other times when he rejected her. Perhaps she doesn't need him as much as he needs her. Perhaps his curse works, and she doesn't really love him. Oh, let it be so – she wouldn't suffer if it were so.
'You must leave because, despite what you hope, I am still a monster'. That was as close as he could come to telling her he cannot truly change, ever.
She gave him the brightest of smiles, though her eyes brimmed with tears – she looked… relieved, too, as if she feared something worse, but was happy to hear that he was only talking of some minor misunderstanding. She put her hands on his shoulders – would similarities between their meetings ever seize? – and spoke, still smiling, still nearly crying: 'Don't you see? This is exactly the reason I have to stay'.
He drew away, alarmed and disappointed. Why was she so stubborn? 'Why? To free me? To save me? To kill the beast?'
His voice sounded harsh, but she paid him no heed. 'No'. She hesitated, looking into his guarded eyes, searching for a measure of encouragement and finding none. Despite his apparent coldness, she gathered her courage, and blushed, and blurted out: 'I have to stay because you are still the man I fell in love with'.
He went pale. 'I don't understand'.
She shook her head, but then looked into his eyes again. 'I didn't understand, too. And you don't understand. I did want to help, and did want to free the person I see in you, but not for myself. Not really. I wanted to do it for you. You were in pain – oh, Rumplestiltskin, do you know how much pain there is in you, and how one feels it? From right here', she put one hand on his chest, right over the heart, and another over her own heart, 'from right here, it goes right here. I thought that if things changed, you'd feel better. But then I thought – may be there is no need to change things. May be I can just make you feel better, by being there. I was on my way to find out when I was… stopped. Well, things are changed now, but you are still in pain. It feels like you are in greater pain than before – you are so much sadder now. And that means you are still the man I love, and I want to make you feel better. Don't tell me that I don't have the power to do it. Don't you dare'.
A rush of emotions came over him. Regret – pointless regret that things couldn't have been clearer and simpler between them, back then and now. Humility – he was such a worthless man, compared to her. Gratitude – for being forgiven and accepted. Fear, for he was faced with a great force. Hope – blinding hope that things might, just might work out for them. And then there was a physical thing – a feeling of her warm small palm on his chest, pressing against the fabric of his shirt and going right trough it to his skin, binding them together in some very basic and simple way. And, all these things combined, it was love – love that he felt taking him over, and making his heart lighter, and somehow it didn't frighten him anymore.
His mouth went slack, for he suddenly found himself on the verge of tears. He knew he must answer her, but he could not speak – he had no voice and no words. He just reached out to her, and pressed her to his chest, burying his face in her hair. Her cup was still in his hand – he held it behind her back.
He didn't close his eyes. He wanted to be certain that he was here, in his shop, with her, and that what was happening was real, and not just one of his lonely dreams.
It seemed that his embrace was a good enough answer, for he felt her sigh happily against his neck. He felt her breath on his skin, and he felt her body, all the gentle curves of it, pressed to his, and something quite apart from hopes and words and revelations woke in him. Her hands were crossed behind his back, her palms resting on the small of his back, warm. Her lips were touching his shirt-collar, an inch away from his bare skin. The fabric of her dress was thin, and he felt her nipples hardening as her breasts brushed his chest. Her skirt was short, and the stockinged skin of her thigh burned his trouser-leg, unbearably close to his groin.
His whole body tensed, hardening, just as it always did when he thought of her in the past – just as it did when she fell into his arms from the ladder. He remembered his mad longing, and felt it again. He remembered his shame, but that didn't surface now. Things were different now. They were not happening just to him, he wasn't imagining them. She was not a fantasy, she was not a memory. She was real, and in his embrace. She was here, with him, she told him she loved him, and he knew he loved her. And where there's love, there is no shame, and no holding back.
He drew away from her, for a second, and she gave him a startled look. He shook his head, indicating her cup, which he placed gently on the table: 'We don't want to break it accidentally, do we? It has been through a lot'.
Just as you were, he thought with terrible and deep sadness. She was a damaged and fragile little thing, and she was his. He will not let her fall and break again. He would never let her out of his grasp again.
With his hands free, he cupped her face, his fingers brushing her cheeks, tracing her ears, coming down to her slender neck. He looked at her face as if drinking it in – absorbing it. She looked up at him with something akin awe – her magical eyes widened, her lips were parted, and they glistened in the dusk of the room, and she seemed to be holding her breath.
'I always wondered…' she started, and then bit her lip shyly.
'What?' He answered in a whisper, careful not to shatter the moment.
She smiled, not taking her gaze off his face: 'I always wondered what color your eyes were'.
And then it crushed him – the enormousness of their miracle, the overpowering force of their bond, the stunning unreal reality of them being together. She looked into his monster's face, back then, and was thinking of the color of his eyes. She wanted to touch him – to reach him. All the time when he was driving himself crazy over her and condemning himself for daring to do it, she was thinking of him – she did want him. Oh what a fool he was to let it go. To think of the time wasted. To think of his longing, and hers.
He lowered his head and kissed her on the lips. He had kissed her already, but this time it was different – there was no apprehension, no fear now. He traced the outline of her mouth with his tongue, he pushed it gently between her lips to open them wider, and then he licked her teeth, as they parted, and then he found her tongue, and sucked on it, gently. She gasped. He let her go, for an instant, for he wanted to lick her lips now and to suck them – the top one first, the lower one second, and then he went inside her mouth again.
Her fingers clutched his shoulders – she needed to support herself. He looked into her face, briefly. She was flushed, her eyes half-closed, her breathing shallow. She was melting in his arms, as he imagined and dreamed she would.
'No magic today?' he whispered into her lips.
'This is magic', she said, her voice hardly audible.
He kissed her again, and let his hand slip from her neck down to her breast, tracing the peaking nipple with his knuckles through the silk of her dress. She uttered a soft moan, like a kitten, and her hands released his shoulders as she started tucking at his tie. She loosened the knot, and her trembling fingers unbuttoned his shirt, and then her hot soft hands touched his chest, and it was his turn to moan.
If ever she doubted her power over him, she could not doubt it now. He felt like clay in her hands as she touched his ribs and his stomach, and then as her hands slid behind his back and traced his spine. His head was thrown back, his eyes closed; she pressed herself even closer, nuzzling her face against his neck, and kissed his jaw, and then he felt her tongue licking his chin.
He hissed, and clutched her buttocks, pressing her to his groin. Then he started to tear at the fabric of her dress, wishing, briefly, that he had his claws still – then he could have cut the dress neatly, and have her naked. But no, his claws wouldn't do to touch her skin – the softest, warmest, gentlest thing he touched in his life.
He had lost count of the times when he imagined her in his arms. He loved her, yes, but he also wanted her – yearned. Yet even the wildest of his dreams could not match the overwhelming reality of being with her. Nothing he did shocked or surprised her – whatever he did, she returned, as if taking a hint. As her dress fell on the floor, she looked at him intently, her eyes misty, her lips swollen, and reached to unbutton his trousers. He caught her hand, stopping it for a second – he had to get rid of his shoes first. He kicked them off, and swayed momentarily – he forgot about his bad leg; it was amazing just how… undamaged he felt with her. He leaned against the table, taking his socks off, than stood in front of her. She still had her underwear on, and her stockings. Her shoes were off. Her hair was wild. His shirt was open, his loose tie still on his neck, his feet bare.
They were still standing by the wheel were they kissed.
The scene was wild, hot, intense, and embarrassing. They could not go on like this – in the shop, among this junk, in such unfitting conditions.
Or could they?
The momentary pause didn't seem to bring either of them to their senses. She still faced him bravely. He breathed ruggedly, trying to take in what he saw.
The most beautiful woman in the world – that's who she was to him. His woman.
He offered her his outstretched hand. 'Come'.
She nodded.
He limped heavily as they moved towards the bed where she slept today – he had no idea where his cane was. She didn't seem to mind that he was crippled – she seemed ready to accept anything about him. And it really, really went into his head.
He sat on the bed, drawing her closer to him, pressing his face to her abdomen. She shivered, but not from revulsion. His hands slid down her legs, taking her stockings off, brushing her skin. Her breathing quickened. Her hands were on his shoulders again, taking off his shirt. I must look miserable to her, he thought – not green and beastly now, yet still old and bony and worn, while she is so, so beautiful. But she didn't seem to mind – she lowered her head, and kissed his shoulder. He caught her breast with his left hand, and his mouth found her nipple, while his right hand touched her between the legs.
She was wet for him, and he completely lost his head. In a matter of seconds she was beneath him on the bed. Her underwear was gone, as were his clothes. Kneeling in front of her, he spread her legs apart, and then he froze, looking into her startled face.
What was he doing? What was he thinking? Was he, indeed, a beast? Was this tangle on the camp-bed in the back room of the shop a fitting way to meet the expectations of a life-time?
He hovered over her, slowly coming to his senses, seeing himself as if from a distance, descending into shame and self-loathing.
She looked at him with wide eyes, unable to understand the change in him.
He looked at her, spread on his narrow bed, naked, white-skinned, glowing; her breasts heaving, her nipples small, her pubic hair dark, her skin damp, her scent intoxicating, so beautiful he felt like crying. She looked so pure. So untouchable.
And then she reached towards him and took his erection into her hand, placing her other hand over his heart.
'Let me love you', she said, trying to catch his eye.
His heart stopped, and a great shudder came over his body. The pain that he believed to be a part of him seeped out, leaving him weightless.
'Yes', he breathed out. 'Yes, Belle, yes'.
Gently, very gently he touched her between the legs again, his fingers tangling in the short hair, reaching the hot, slightly rubbery flesh, seeking the narrow opening, hearing her gasp, and stifling it with a kiss. She opened up to him, and relaxed, as his fingers kneaded her, and then she moaned. She was moaning for him, softly, and he knew he would never be able to stop now, and he would never be able to live without hearing this moan over and over again.
He removed his hand, and placed his erection in its stead. He pushed in, quickly, not really able control himself any longer. She never tensed, not even for an instant.
And then he seized to be, for he was turned into her – taken inside her and lost there. He had no soul, and no being apart from her. He was her – her darkness and her wetness, the ripples and the tightening of her insides. He was her eyes, opened in wonder. He was her voice, calling him. He was her sigh, and her soft outcry.
He was her light. For a moment, for one blinding moment inside her, taking her in and giving himself away, he felt no darkness in him, none at all.
When things around them returned to the semblance of reality, he realized he was still on top of her, still inside her – they were tangled so tightly the narrow bed didn't feel narrow at all. He was embracing her, feeling her breasts against his chest. Her hands were wrapped around him, her feet resting on his back. He raised his head to look at her face.
She looked solemn and calm. With one hand she reached to touch his face, placing her palm against his cheek – his skin tensed under her touch.
'You are beautiful', she said.
That was when he cried.
